Corporates blamed for high software piracy rate

Australian corporations continue to defy software piracy rules, with the illegal download rate at 31 percent last year, down only one percent on 2004.

The Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) released an IDC study which found that Australia’s global ranking in software piracy remained at 14, well behind the US, New Zealand, the UK and Scandinavia. Illegal software use also cost Australia $446 million in 2005.

According to BSAA chairman Jim Macnamara, Australian company directors unaware of software piracy within the organisations.

“Despite the increase in Internet usage, we are finding that it’s still the corporations that are heading the pack in illegal downloading.

“A lot of CEOs and COOs are just unaware about their business at the desktop level. They don’t realise workers are using software without proper licensing or taking advantage of their work’s Internet speed and downloading illegal programs.”

Macnamara said for the past five years Australia has been hovering at the 30 percent rate, well behind the US and even New Zealand, both reporting a 20 percent piracy rate. “While we were down from 50 percent in the 1990s, 31 percent is still not good enough,” he said.

He said that software asset management was all that was needed to curtail these problems. “It’s human nature that if workers aren’t properly governed then they are going to try and get away with this. What happens in corporations must be managed by the people at the top,” he said.

Globally, 35 percent of the packaged software installed on personal computers (PC) worldwide in 2005 was illegal, amounting to $34 billion in global losses due to software piracy.

IDC used proprietary statistics for software and hardware shipments, conducted 5600 surveys and enlisted IDC analysts in 38 countries to confirm software piracy trends.